What is the central metaphor in the poem "A Red, Red Rose?"

The central
metaphors in are time and love. Burns uses a series of images and concepts that describe
love's delicacy and fragility in time. In other words, love and beauty are fragile because they
exist in time. However, Burns also describes love that sustains over great periods of time, so
long that perhaps love itself is eternal. Paralleling this temporary/eternal duality of time is
the duality of the word luve which represents both his lover and the abstract quality of love.
A person has a limited amount of time in life but love, and perhaps his love's soul, transcend
the limitations of...